Last week, Riot expanded its Valorant agent roster with the release of Iso, a Duelist with abilities designed to aid in pushing onto sites. This is Valorant's seventh Duelist, making it the most prevalent class in the game.
New Valorant agent releases are usually a mixed bag. Characters launch with creative, often mind-blowing abilities, but for me, learning how the abilities work and how they interact with other agents takes some time. I prefer to observe how other players use them and how they impact my play before I dive in to learn them myself. Sometimes they slide right in and feel like a good addition. Other times, it feels like it takes a while for players to learn how to use the new agent in ways that don't negatively impact their teammates.
That said, my personal experience with Iso is pretty limited. My playstyle, which tends to blend slow and stealthy with fast and chaotic, doesn’t seem particularly suited to Iso. Whenever I play Valorant, I look for ways to help my team win. I’m never going to consistently be the player at the top of the leaderboard with 30 or 40 kills, but I look for other ways to make an impact. Whether that’s Raze’s bot or grenades, or Chamber’s flank detection, I try to find ways to give my team an edge.
This piece isn’t about my thoughts on Iso as an agent but rather as an addition to team makeup at this early stage. Will he become as popular in unrated and competitive matches as Jett or Reyna? Or will he be relegated to the Room of Inconsequence with other forgotten heroes like Harbor or Astra?
To begin answering those questions, let's first look at his abilities. Iso’s Contingency ability, which pushes an indestructible wall forward, is a solid entry utility. By communicating with your team and pushing the shield out in just the right direction, you can lead your teammates onto the site with one less corner to watch.
His Undercut ability, which briefly makes enemies more vulnerable to damage, could be useful if used correctly, as it will increase the damage that tagged enemies take for a few seconds.
His Double Tap ability, which applies a shield that absorbs one damage instance (effectively keeping you safe from one headshot or otherwise deadly attack), can be pretty clutch, but again, only if you time it correctly and actually get a kill to activate it.
Kill Contract, his ultimate ability, warps you and one enemy to an alternate dimension for a fight to the death. (Iso is isolating you… get it?) It offers a chance for expert aimers to show off and get an easy kill but doesn’t feel like it has the ability to change the game like a well-timed Raze or Cypher ultimate might. All-in-all, Iso feels like a slightly more niche version of Reyna.
It's still early, but I’ve played on a team with or against an Iso seven times since his release. To my surprise, even though he's a brand new agent, he wasn't selected in every match. To be fair, the new system for unlocking agents is a little confusing, and unless you pay outright for him or have linked your Riot account to Xbox Game Pass, you have to wait a few weeks to unlock him. Still, I wonder if he doesn’t have the broad appeal Riot was hoping for.
One enemy Iso I faced went 30-14-5, which is a great KDA, but I'm not sure how much of that was a benefit of Iso's skillset versus the player just being that good. I faced off against him several times, and he was quick to one-shot me in the head pretty much every time. I noticed him using the Contingency ability often, but it was always just sent right up the middle rather than blocking off strategic angles. There's still merit to this strategy, but it seemed like it could have been better utilized. I went 1-1 against him when trapped in his ultimate, so it's not like he was dominating with that.
All that to say, I don't think Iso was the game-changer I might have expected. In fact, I personally would have given the team MVP nod to their Viper, who went 15-17-16. Those 16 assists meant she was landing a lot of shots, or otherwise causing damage to many enemies, weakening them for the fatal blows by other teammates. Iso made a name for himself in the match, but we still took the team 24 rounds before they finally finished us off. Was Iso the X-factor? I don't think so.
What about at the pro level? Some pros are already sounding off on their thoughts, but one of the more prominent voices, Sentinels coach Adam Kaplan, doesn’t seem to think he will get much playtime.
The only viable single duelists in pro play have the ability to dive out of chokes, Iso doesn’t.It’s already hard for an agent to earn a flex spot in double controller meta. In single controller comps, that flex spot can go to all the initiators, duelists, and sage…
— SEN kaplan (@itskaplan) October 19, 2023
Of course, there are also a number of articles out there saying Iso will be more valuable than first thought, so it may just take some time to see how players settle into using him. MMORPG will be tracking this information in the coming weeks and report back.
Like every agent in Valorant, if you know how to use Iso correctly, you can probably be successful with him. But since his abilities mostly come down to the player needing to have solid aim—heck, you even have to shoot a small icon to activate the Double Tap ability—you'll still only be as good as your mouse-pointing skills.
Iso is an interesting addition to Valorant, but like Gekko's brief extreme popularity as an Initiator, I think he'll settle into an existence of being a more moderately selected Duelist, while Jett and Reyna will continue dominating lineups. His largely self-serving abilities (and I don't say that pejoratively; it's just a fact) can help a skilled marksman increase their KDA and can potentially help with site entry, but I'm not sure he'll be a reliable source of turning the tide of battle any time soon.
